Chapter 2

An examination of the present localisation of these remnants of the Negrito inhabitants shows how they have been split up, amalgamated with, or driven to the islands by the conquering invaders. An example of what has taken place may be found in the case of Borneo, where Negritos still exist in the centre of the island. The Dyaks chase them like wild beasts, and shoot down the children, who take refuge in the trees. This will not seem in the least surprising to those who have studied the history of the relation between autochthonous races and their invaders. It is the same story that has been told of the Anglo-Saxon race in its dealings with aborigines in America, and notably, in our case, in Tasmania.

Turning from Asia to a continent more closely associated, at least in popular estimation, with pigmy races, we find in Africa several races of dwarf men, of great antiquity and surpassing interest. The discoveries of Stanley, Schweinfurth, Miani, and others have now placed at our disposal very complete information respecting the pigmies of the central part of the continent, with whom it will, therefore, be convenient to make a commencement. These pigmies appear to be divided into two tribes, which, though similar in stature, and alike distinguished by the characteristic of attaching themselves to some larger race of natives, yet present considerable points of difference, so much so as to cause Mr. Stanley to say that they are as unlike as a Scandinavian is to a Turk. "Scattered," says the same authority,[A] "among the Balessé, between Ipoto and Mount Pisgah, and inhabiting the land between the Ngaiyu and Ituri rivers, a region equal in area to about two-thirds of Scotland, are the Wambutti, variously called Batwa, Akka, and Bazungu. These people are under-sized nomads, dwarfs or pigmies, who live in the uncleared virgin forest, and support themselves on game, which they are very expert in catching. They vary in height from three feet to four feet six inches. A full-grown adult may weigh ninety pounds. They plant their village camps three miles around a tribe of agricultural aborigines, the majority of whom are fine stalwart people. They use poisoned arrows, with which they kill elephants, and they capture other kinds of game by the use of traps."

[Footnote A: In Darkest Africa, vol. ii. p. 92.]

The two groups are respectively called Batwa and Wambutti. The former inhabit the northern parts of the above-mentioned district, the latter the southern. The former have longish heads, long narrow faces, and small reddish eyes set close together, whilst the latter have round faces and open foreheads, gazelle-like eyes, set far apart, and rich yellow ivory complexion. Their bodies are covered with stiffish grey short hair. Two further quotations from the same source may be given to convey an idea to those ignorant of the original work, if such there be, of the appearances of these dwarfs. Speaking of the queen of a tribe of pigmies, Stanley says,[A] "She was brought in to see me, with three rings of polished iron around her neck, the ends of which were coiled like a watch-spring. Three iron rings were suspended to each ear. She is of a light-brown complexion with broad round face, large eyes, and small but full lips. She had a quiet modest demeanour, though her dress was but a narrow fork clout of bark cloth. Her height is about four feet four inches, and her age may be nineteen or twenty. I notice when her arms are held against the light a whity-brown fell on them. Her skin has not that silky smoothness of touch common to the Zanzibaris, but altogether she is a very pleasing little creature." To this female portrait may be subjoined one of a male aged probably twenty-one years and four feet in height.[B] "His colour was coppery, the fell over the body was almost furry, being nearly half an inch long, and his hands were very delicate. On his head he wore a bonnet of a priestly form, decorated with a bunch of parrot feathers, and a broad strip of bark covered his nakedness."

[Footnote A: In Darkest Africa, vol. i. p. 345.]

[Footnote B: Ibid., ii. 40.]

Jephson states[A] that he found continual traces of them from 270 30' E. long., a few miles above the Equator, up to the edge of the great forest, five days' march from Lake Albert. He also says that they are a hardy daring race, always ready for war, and are much feared by their neighbours. As soon as a party of dwarfs makes its appearance near a village, the chief hastens to propitiate them by presents of corn and such vegetables as he possesses. They never exceed four feet one inch in height, he informs us, and adds a characteristic which has not been mentioned by Stanley, one, too, which is very remarkable when it is remembered how scanty is the facial hair of the Negros and Negritos--the men have often very long beards. The southern parts of the continent are occupied by the Bushmen, who are vigorous and agile, of a stature ranging from four feet six inches to four feet nine inches, and sufficiently well known to permit me to pass over them without further description. The smallest woman of this race who has been measured was only three feet three inches in height, and Barrow examined one, who was the mother of several children, with a stature of three feet eight inches. The Akoas of the Gaboon district were a race of pigmies who, now apparently extinct, formerly dwelt on the north of the Nazareth River. A male of this tribe was photographed and measured by the French Admiral Fleuriot de l'Angle. His age was about forty and his stature four feet six inches.

[Footnote A: Emm Pasha, p. 367, et seq.]

Flower[A] says that "another tribe, the M'Boulous, inhabiting the coast north of the Gaboon River, have been described by M. Marche as probably the primitive race of the country. They live in little villages, keeping entirely to themselves, though surrounded by the larger Negro tribes, M'Pongos and Bakalais, who are encroaching upon them so closely that their numbers are rapidly diminishing. In 1860 they were not more than 3000; in 1879 they were much less numerous. They are of an earthy-brown colour, and rarely exceed five feet three inches in height. Another group living between the Gaboon and the Congo, in Ashangoland, a male of which measured four feet six inches, has been described by Du Chaillu."

In Loango there is a tribe called Babonko, which was described by Battell in 1625, in the work entitled "Purchas his Pilgrimes," in the following terms:--"To the north-east of Mani-Kesock are a kind of little people called Matimbas; which are no bigger than boyes of twelve yeares old, but very thicke, and live only upon flesh, which they kill in the woods with their bows and darts. They pay tribute to Mani-Kesock, and bring all their elephants' teeth and tayles to him. They will not enter into any of the Maramba's houses, nor will suffer any one to come where they dwell. And if by chance any Maramba or people of Longo pass where they dwell, they will forsake that place and go to another. The women carry bows and arrows as well as the men. And one of these will walk in the woods alone and kill the Pongos with their poysoned arrows." It is somewhat surprising that Tyson, who gives in his essay (p. 80) the account of the same people published at a later date (1686) by Dapper, should have missed his fellow-countryman's narrative. The existence of this tribe has been established by a German expedition, one of the members of which, Dr. Falkenstein, photographed and measured an adult male whose stature was four feet six inches.

Krapf[A] states that in the south of Schoa, in a part of Abyssinia as yet unworked, the Dokos live, who are not taller than four feet. According to his account, they are of a dark olive colour, with thick prominent lips, flat noses, small eyes, and long flowing hair. They have no dwellings, temples, holy trees, chiefs, or weapons, live on roots and fruit, and are ignorant of fire. Another group was described by Mollieu in 1818 as inhabiting Tenda-Maié, near the Rio Grande, but very little is known about them. In a work entitled "The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas," Halliburton[B] has brought forward a number of statements to prove that a tribe of dwarfs, named like those of Central Africa, Akkas, of a reddish complexion and with short woolly hair, live in the district adjoining Soos. These dwarfs have been alluded to by Harris and Dönnenburg,[C] but Mr. Harold Crichton Browne,[D] who has explored neighbouring districts, is of opinion that there is no such tribe, and that the accounts of them have been based upon the examination of sporadic examples of dwarfishness met with in that as in other parts of the world.

[Footnote A: _Morgenblatt_, 1853 (quoted by Schaafhausen, _Arch. f. Anth._, 1866, p. 166).]

[Footnote B: London, Nutt, 1891.]

[Footnote C: _Nature_, 1892, ii. 616.]

[Footnote A: _Nature_, 1892, i. 269.]

Finally, in Madagascar it is possible that there may be a dwarf race. Oliver[A] states that "the Vazimbas are supposed to have been the first occupants of Ankova. They are described by Rochon, under the name of Kunios, as a nation of dwarfs averaging three feet six inches in stature, of a lighter colour than the Negroes, with very long arms and woolly hair. As they were only described by natives of the coast, and have never been seen, it is natural to suppose that these peculiarities have been exaggerated; but it is stated that people of diminutive size still exist on the banks of a certain river to the south-west." There are many tumuli of rude work and made of rough stones throughout the country, which are supposed to be their tombs. In idolatrous days, says Mullens,[B] the Malagasy deified the Vazimba, and their so-called tombs were the most sacred objects in the country. In this account may be found further evidence in favour of Mr. Gomme's theory, to which attention has already been called.

[Footnote A: _Anthrop. Memoirs_, iii. 1.]

[Footnote B: _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, v. 181.]

In the great continent of America there does not appear to have ever been, so far as our present knowledge teaches, any pigmy race. Dr. Brinton, the distinguished American ethnologist, to whom I applied for information on this point, has been good enough to write to me that, in his opinion, there is no evidence of any pigmy race in America. The "little people" of the "stone graves" in Tennessee, often supposed to be such, were children, as the bones testify. The German explorer Hassler has alleged the existence of a pigmy race in Brazil, but testimony is wanting to support such allegation. There are two tribes of very short but not pigmy stature in America, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuégo and the Utes of Colorado, but both of these average over five feet.

Leaving aside for the moment the Lapps, to whom I shall return, there does not appear to have been at any time a really pigmy race in Europe, so far as any discoveries which have been made up to the present time show. Professor Topinard, whose authority upon this point cannot be gainsaid, informs me that the smallest race known to him in Central Europe is that of the pre-historic people of the Lozère, who were Neolithic troglodytes, and are represented probably at the present day by some of the peoples of South Italy and Sardinia. Their average stature was about five feet two inches. This closely corresponds with what is known of the stature of the Platycnemic race of Denbighshire, the Perthi-Chwareu. Busk[A] says of them that they were of low stature, the mean height, deduced from the lengths of the long bones, being little more than five feet. As both sexes are considered together in this description, it is fair to give the male a stature of about five feet two inches,[B] It also corresponds with the stature assigned by Pitt-Rivers to a tribe occupying the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire during the Roman occupation, the average height of whose males and females was five feet two and a half inches and four feet ten and three-quarter inches respectively.

[Footnote A: _Jour. Ethn. Soc._, 1869-70, p. 455.]

[Footnote B: Since these pages were printed, Prof. Kollmann, of Basle, has described a group of Neolithic pigmies as having existed at Schaffhausen. The adult interments consisted of the remains of full-grown European types and of small-sized people. These two races were found interred side by side under precisely similar conditions, from which he concludes that they lived peaceably together, notwithstanding racial difference. Their stature (about three feet six inches) may be compared with that of the Veddahs in Ceylon. Prof. Kollmann believes that they were a distinct species of mankind.]

Dr. Rahon,[A] who has recently made a careful study of the bones of pre-historic and proto-historic races, with special reference to their stature, states that the skeletons attributed to the most ancient and to the Neolithic races are of a stature below the middle height, the average being a little over five feet three inches. The peoples who constructed the Megalithic remains of Roknia and of the Caucasus, were of a stature similar to our own. The diverse proto-historic populations, Gauls, Franks, Burgundians, and Merovingians, considered together, present a stature slightly superior to that of the French of the present day, but not so much so as the accounts of the historians would have led us to believe.

[Footnote A: _Recherches sur les Ossements Humaines, Anciens et Préhistonques. Mém. de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_, Sér, ii. tom. iv. 403.]

It remains now to deal with two races whose physical characters are of considerable importance in connection with certain points which will be dealt with in subsequent pages, I mean the Lapps and the Innuit or Eskimo.

The Lapps, according to Karonzine,[A] one of their most recent describers, are divisible into two groups, Scandinavian and Russian, the former being purer than the latter race. The average male stature is five feet, a figure which corresponds closely with that obtained by Mantegazza and quoted by Topinard. The extremes obtained by this observer amongst men were, on the one hand, five feet eight inches, and on the other four feet four inches. As, however, in a matter of this kind we have to deal with averages and not with extremes, we must conclude that the Lapps, though a stunted race, are not pigmies, in the sense in which the word is scientifically employed.

[Footnote A: _L'Anthropologie_, ii. 80.]

The Innuit or Eskimo were called by the original Norse explorers "Skraelingjar," or dwarfs, a name now converted by the Innuit into "karalit," which is the nearest approach that they are able to make phonetically to the former term. They are certainly, on the average, a people of less than middle stature, yet they can in no sense be described as Pigmies. Their mean height is five feet three inches. Nansen[A] says of them, "It is a common error amongst us in Europe to think of the Eskimo as a diminutive race. Though no doubt smaller than the Scandinavian peoples, they must be reckoned amongst the middle-sized races, and I even found amongst those of purest breeding men of nearly six feet in height."

[Footnote A: _Eskimo Life_, p. 20.]

II.

The _raison d'être_ of Tyson's essay was to explain away the accounts of the older writers relating to Pigmy races, on the ground that, as no such races existed, an explanation of some kind was necessary in order to account for so many and such detailed descriptions as were to be found in their works. Having now seen not merely that there are such things as Pigmy races, but that they have a wide distribution throughout the world, it may be well to consider to which of the existing or extinct races, the above-mentioned accounts may be supposed to have referred. In this task I am much aided in several instances by the labours of De Quatrefages, and as his book is easily accessible, it will be unnecessary for me to repeat the arguments in favour of his decisions which he has there given.

Starting with Asia, we have in the first place the statement of Pliny, that "immediately after the nation of the Prusians, in the mountains where it is said are pigmies, is found the Indus." These Pigmies may be identified with the Brahouis, now Dravidian, but still possessing the habit, attributed to them by Pliny, of changing their dwellings twice a year, in summer and winter, migrations rendered necessary by the search for food for their flocks. The same author's allusion to the "Spithamæi Pygmæi" of the mountains in the neighbourhood of the Ganges may apply to the Santals or some allied tribe, though Pliny's stature for them of two feet four inches is exaggeratedly diminutive, and he has confused them with Homer's Pigmies, who were, as will be seen, a totally different people.

Ctesias[A] tells us that "Middle India has black men, who are called Pygmies, using the same language as the other Indians; they are, however, very little; that the greatest do not exceed the height of two cubits, and the most part only of one cubit and a half. But they nourish the longest hair, hanging down unto the knees, and even below; moreover, they carry a beard more at length than any other men; but, what is more, after this promised beard is risen to them, they never after use any clothing, but send down, truly, the hairs from the back much below the knees, but draw the beard before down to the feet; afterward, when they have covered the whole body with hairs, they bind themselves, using those in the place of a vestment. They are, moreover, apes and deformed. Of these Pygmies, the king of the Indians has three thousand in his train; for they are very skilful archers." No doubt the actual stature has been much diminished in this account, and, as De Quatrefages suggests, the garment of long floating grasses which they may well have worn, may have been mistaken for hair; yet, in the description, he believes that he is able to recognise the ancestors of the Bandra-Lokh of the Vindhya Mountains. Ctesias' other statement, that "the king of India sends every fifth year fifty thousand swords, besides abundance of other weapons, to the nation of the Cynocephali," may refer to the same or some other tribe.

[Footnote A: The quotation is taken from Ritson, _Fairy Tales_, P. 4.]

De Quatrefages also thinks that an allusion to the ancestors of the Jats, who would then have been less altered by crossing than now, may be found in Herodotus' account of the army of Xerxes when he says, "The Eastern Ethiopians serve with the Indians. They resemble the other Ethiopians, from whom they only differ in language and hair. The Eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while those of Lybia are more woolly than all other men."

Writing of isles in the neighbourhood of Java, Maundeville says,[A] "In another yle, ther ben litylle folk, as dwerghes; and thei ben to so meche as the Pygmeyes, and thei han no mouthe, but in stede of hire mouthe, thei han a lytylle round hole; and whan thei schulle eten or drynken, thei taken thorghe a pipe or a penne or suche a thing, and sowken it in, for thei han no tongue, and therefore thei speke not, but thei maken a maner of hissynge, as a Neddre dothe, and thei maken signes on to another, as monkes don, be the whiche every of hem undirstondethe the other."

[Footnote A: Ed. Halliwell, p. 205.]

Strip this statement of the characteristic Maundevillian touches with regard to the mouth and tongue, and it may refer to some of the insular races which exist or existed in the district of which he is treating.

A much fuller account[A] by the same author relates to Pigmies in the neighbourhood of a river, stated by a commentator[B] to be the Yangtze-Kiang, "a gret ryvere, that men clepen Dalay, and that is the grettest ryvere of fressche water that is in the world. For there, as it is most narow, it is more than 4 myle of brede. And thanne entren men azen in to the lond of the great Chane. That ryvere gothe thorge the lond of Pigmaus, where that the folk ben of litylle stature, that ben but 3 span long, and thei ben right faire and gentylle, aftre here quantytees, bothe the men and the women. And thei maryen hem, whan thei ben half zere of age and getten children. And thei lyven not, but 6 zeer or 7 at the moste. And he that lyveth 8 zeer, men holden him there righte passynge old. Theise men ben the beste worcheres of gold, sylver, cotoun, sylk, and of alle such thinges, of ony other, that be in the world. And thei han often tymes werre with the briddes of the contree, that thei taken and eten. This litylle folk nouther labouren in londes ne in vynes. But thei han grete men amonges hem, of oure stature, that tylen the lond, and labouren amonges the vynes for hem. And of the men of oure stature, han thei als grete skorne and wondre, as we wolde have among us of Geauntes, zif thei weren amonges us. There is a gode cytee, amonges othere, where there is duellynge gret plentee of the lytylle folk, and is a gret cytee and a fair, and the men ben grete that duellen amonges hem; but whan thei getten ony children, thei ben als litylle as the Pygmeyes, and therefore thei ben alle, for the moste part, alle Pygmeyes, for the nature of the land is suche. The great Cane let kepe this cytee fulle wel, for it is his. And alle be it, that the Pygmeyes ben litylle, zit thei ben fulle resonable, aftre here age and connen bothen wytt and gode and malice now." This passage, as will be noted, incorporates the Homeric tale of the battles between the Pigmies and the Cranes, and is adorned with a representation of such an encounter. Whether Maundeville's dwarfs were the same as the Siao-Jin of the Shan-hai-King is a question difficult to decide; but, in any case, both these pigmy races of legend inhabited a part of what is now the Chinese Empire. The same Pigmies seem to be alluded to in the rubric of the Catalan map of the world in the National Library of Paris, the date of which is A.D. 1375. "Here (N.W. of Catayo-Cathay) grow little men who are but five palms in height, and though they be little, and not fit for weighty matters, yet they be brave and clever at weaving and keeping cattle." If such an explanation may be hazarded, we may perhaps go further and suppose that Paulus Jovius may have been alluding to the Koro-puk-guru, when, as Pomponius Mela tells us, he taught that there were Pigmies beyond Japan. In both these cases, however, it is well to remember that there is a river in Macedon as well as in Monmouth, and that it is hazardous to come to too definite a belief as to the exact location of the Pigmies of ancient writers.

[Footnote A: _Maundeville_, p. 211.]

[Footnote B: _Quart. Rev._, 172, p. 431.]

The continent of Africa yielded its share of Pigmies to the same writers. The most celebrated of all are those alluded to by Aristotle in his classical passage, "They (the Cranes) come out of Scythia to the Lakes above Egypt whence the Nile flows. This is the place whereabouts the Pigmies dwell. For this is no fable but a truth. Both they and the horses, as 'tis said, are of a small kind. They are Troglodytes and live in caves."

Leaving aside the crane part of the tale, which it has been suggested may really have referred to ostriches, Aristotle's Pigmy race may, from their situation, be fairly identified with the Akkas described by Stanley and others. That this race is an exceedingly ancient one is proved by the fact that Marriette Bey has discovered on a tomb of the ancient Empire of Egypt a figure of a dwarf with the name Akka inscribed by it. This race is also supposed to have been that which, alluded to by Homer, has become confused with other dwarf tribes in different parts of the world.